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Mike’s Story – a haiku sequence

I’ve always been fascinated with Mike’s story; how he traded his arm for redemption and a chance to hunt down his former partner. I wanted to do a special haiku to mark getting to the 200th video I’ve done. Number 200 happens to coincide with my 6th wedding anniversary and I have much bigger plans then, so I decided to do it for number 197 instead.

You can find a link to the video film that I made below. Here’s the poem, which is a sequence of 12 haikus. I used a rhyme scheme in the first two lines of each haiku.

Mike’s Story

That last killing spree

Left a demon’s mark on me

Beyond ink and blood

Familiar and I

Walked free of suspicion’s eye

Then came reckoning

Memory returned

All chances at life I’d spurned

To kill at his side

From behind pale light

A vision appeared of right

Set my path anew

But what of the mark

Awful contract with the dark

Surely no release

A way then was cleared

To be from me rightly sheared

That ominous stain

Steadfast in resolve

With blade my sins to absolve

I lived victim’s pain

The arm once severed

Took on life its own, quivered

In evolution

Sprouted a body

Danced to silent rhapsody

Then bid me farewell

I knew then my crime

In these woods I’d wasted time

Partner gone away

To feed on suff’ring

Of those fate would to him would bring

For greedy pleasures

My purpose was here

To hunt him down, far or near

Put an end to fear

by Richard Austin

Here’s the video version. I hope you enjoy it.

and here’s some stuff from behind the scenes, like me getting pestered by a wasp and getting caught ‘acting’ by a member of the public.

I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, there’s a whole load more on my YouTube channel – What the Haiku

And, if you want to see more of my Twin Peaks poetry, you can click the links below.